


in the end we're all haunted houses

by ElisabethMonroe



Series: Adam Parrish and His Band of Merry Men [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish-centric, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, First Meetings, Gen, Halloween, Haunted House, Haunted Houses, M/M, magician Adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisabethMonroe/pseuds/ElisabethMonroe
Summary: A witch, a magician, a ghost, a dreamer, and a king walk into a haunted house...
Relationships: Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch, Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: Adam Parrish and His Band of Merry Men [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962340
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	in the end we're all haunted houses

**Author's Note:**

> this story is not as dramatic as the title would lead you to believe
> 
> also this story is gen with underlying hopes of love
> 
> some brief description of halloween gore

“This is probably one of your dumber ideas,” Adam pointed out, gnawing on a funnel cake that had gone stale a few carnival booths back.

Blue grinned gleefully, face turned orange and green in the glow of the haunted house lights. “It’s a wonderful idea.”

“If you make me throw up all this funnel cake, you won’t need a haunted house because I am going to haunt you.”

“Throwing up kills you?” she asked in faux curiosity. “I’ll have to remember that.”

Adam rolled his eyes and shoved more fried cake into his mouth. When he’d agreed to come down from campus for the weekend carnival to work in the psychics’ booth, he had expected to work. Not to entertain Blue after she accidentally exploded a candle and almost caught the tent on fire.

Really, it wasn’t her fault. She amplified energy. She didn’t decide who had way too much energy to begin with.

Still, Adam had been practicing his tarot reading for weeks and now he only had a few minutes of practical magic under his belt. It kind of sucked.

“This is kind of like all those dates you never took me on,” she said.

Adam choked on the funnel cake. “Why do you keep bringing that up?” he asked, taking a drink from the overly expensive soda she handed him. “It’s been years. Get over me.”

Blue laughed and knocked her shoulder into his. “Never, Parrish. At least, not until I find the only other good guy on the planet.”

“There are good guys,” he argued as they got in line.

“Don’t say things you don’t believe.”

They passed over a handful of carnival tickets to avoid paying cash and were ushered to a pod of other people--three other boys their age. One was tall with a shaved head and an angry scowl. For a second, Adam thought he was part of the house until the boy next to him knocked on his arm to bring his gaze to a phone. The second boy was handsome in a cartoonish way, like that he shouldn’t exist with such a good nose and fluffy hair and nice arms. The third boy was trying to look over the second’s shoulder to see his phone too. He was the palest of the three of them--and the first guy really made that an achievement--with white hair and light skin. In the flashing lights and shadows of the house, his face looked badly bruised, but then the strobe effect changed and he was just another teenager.

Adam’s fingers came up to his own cheek, but there was no tenderness there, no bruise or gash. It was just a haunted memory outside of a haunted house.

The handsome man was the first to notice their arrival. “See! I told you we could make a full group,” he said, knocking his knuckles into the tall one’s chest. “He thought there’d be no small groups like us.”

Blue and Adam exchanged knowing looks but managed to school their faces. “They’re counting out group numbers?” Blue asked.

“Yeah, trying to keep the flow moving properly,” the light haired boy said.

“I heard someone passed out last week and held up the whole damn thing,” the tall one said. “Surprised they didn’t get trampled.”

The handsome one tsked and looked at him admonishingly. “Behave, Ronan,” he said. 

“Forgive him, he’s an asshole,” the light haired one said and then laughed when the tall one--Ronan--flipped him off.

“I’m Gansey,” the handsome one introduced. “And this is Noah. We’re all roommates.”

“You’re Raven Boys,” Adam said, nodding at Noah’s sweater.

“Debatable,” Ronan said.

“I don’t know, I hear most of them are assholes,” Blue answered with a grin.

“They are,” Ronan agreed. “Just not like me.”

“No, you’re particularly apt at it,” Gansey said. And who even talked like that to someone who looked like a motorcycle dive bar ad that had come to life? Or at all?

“My name’s Blue and--”

“Sorry, you said Blue?” Gansey said and Adam almost reached over to ball a fist in the back of her jacket because, really, that was the easiest way to piss her off.

“Yes. Blue Lily. Like the col--” she started but Gansey clapped his hands.

“Like Lily Blues!”

Adam raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything until it was clear Blue wasn’t going to answer. It was unusual for someone to get her name so right.

“My name’s Adam,” he said. He glanced up and accidentally met Ronan’s eyes. 

“Welcome, first son of God,” the boy nearly sneered.

“I doubt that’s what my parents were thinking. It was probably just the first name they saw on a baby name sheet in the hospital.”

“Adam!” Blue admonished, not unlike Gansey had to Ronan earlier. But it made Ronan’s facade crack a little. Adam couldn’t tell if he was almost smirking or genuinely frowning.

“What brings you out to a haunted house?” Gansey asked, clearly trying to be some form of a diplomat. Or maybe he was just very bad at tense situations.

“Good question for you too, since you already live in a haunted house,” Noah said.

“Monmouth is not haunted, weirdo,” Ronan said.

“Yes it is. I’ve been dead for seven years. I’m haunting the shit out of it.”

Ronan rolled his eyes and shoved Noah back. “You’re so dramatic.”

“A ghost and a witch, you boys are in for a spooky night,” Blue said.

“Oh, good, she thinks she’s a witch,” Ronan said.

Adam almost felt bad for correcting her right after. “Your family are psychics, which still doesn’t include you,” he said.

“Your family are psychics?” Gansey asked.

But Blue was too preoccupied with Adam to answer. She leveled a dangerous stare at him. “I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you, magic boy.”

Adam groaned and brought his hands up to his face.

“Wait, you’re a witch?” Gansey continued, looking at Adam now, though his gaze definitely kept going back to Blue.

“No!” Adam snapped over Ronan’s snickers. “I just...have a predisposition for… I don’t know. What is it, Blue? Occult-y things?”

“It’s hardly occult. Though…” She suddenly got lost in thought. “Nah, not occult.” She turned to address the other boys. Which meant Gansey. “My family deals with tarot reading, palmistry, aura examinations, crystal ball fortunes. Runes now and then. Other things as cousins and aunts and others come and go. Adam connects to energy on a primary level. No tarot decks, no crystal balls, no animal bones. He can scry right into a subconscious, into an energy flow.”

Gansey had a small moleskin journal produced from somewhere, a pen already between his teeth. “Scry, that means...that’s magic through the separation of mind and soul and body, right?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just allowing a truth to move through you, making you more susceptible to the truth. The way Adam does it?” She glanced at him and watched a muscle in his jaw jump. “Total separation every time.”

“Fascinating. How do you do it?” Gasney asked, turning those curious eyes on Adam.

“I--I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s all cool, but I’m really a ghost,” Noah said.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re super spooky, Noah,” Ronan said. “Get off his ass, Gansey. You’re not gonna get any more answers out of him than you do all the other frauds you interview.”

Adam glared over Gansey’s shoulder at Ronan.

“Could you tell me something about Ronan?” Gansey asked.

“That’s too far. Bullshit!” Ronan objected.

“He’s an asshole,” Adam offered up.

It made Gansey, Blue, and Noah laugh. Adam kept his gaze locked with Ronan’s, watching anger and irritation alight in his eyes like flames.

“We’re well past that,” Noah said and threw his arm around Ronan’s shoulder. He had to go up on his tiptoes to do it.

“I can’t do anything without...without a bowl of water or a mirror.” He wasn’t very practiced at it. He’d only been with the psychics for eight or so months before they helped him get into a private school in Maryland. He hadn’t had time to hone his skills. Blue hadn’t said the important thing. Adam was a natural. It was good for getting started, but he had no training. He wasn’t half as powerful as some of the other psychics. Sometimes naturals were just that. Eternal beginners. It didn’t help that when he was in Maryland, it felt like all his energy and power ebbed and stayed just out of reach.

Tonight, it felt alive and roaring. He wasn’t sure if that was just being back in Henrietta, around the psychics, or if it was because he was irritated and happy and nervous and interested for the first time in weeks, at least since he’d left for the semester.

“I need a conduit to lose myself into. And it has to be dark. And quiet. I couldn’t do it out here even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. It’s not a party trick.”

“You were treating it like a party trick in the tent,” Ronan said.

“What?” Adam asked sharply. Blue and Gansey both looked up at him too.

“I walked by earlier,” he said with a shrug. “You were playing cards.”

“It’s _reading_ cards and tarot isn’t the same thing as scrying,” Adam said, a hard edge to his voice. “I just have to let truth and energy pass through me to read cards. I have to give myself up to scry.”

“Is it worth it?” Ronan asked.

“What? What I learn from it?”

“No. What you offer. Is your self worth truth and magic?”

Adam’s jaw clenched. “Something seems to think so.”

“Can you two have your measuring contest somewhere else?” Blue asked.

“Hey, I think we’re moving,” Noah said, gliding forward and drawing Gansey along with him. Blue followed after Gansey, which meant Adam was left following after Ronan.

Even if he wasn’t the worst person Adam had probably ever spoken to, following after him would’ve been terrible because Ronan was taller than Adam and had the shoulders of a tennis player, or a farmer or something. There was no way Adam could see what was coming unless he was right against Ronan’s back, looking over his shoulder.

Which wasn’t going to happen.

The house was set up like any dumb haunted house, all faux Victorian architecture and cackling lightning that illuminated bats swooping around gargoyles. It was an impressive display for something that got put up and taken down in five days.

A decrepit butler ushered people into the house and he dragged long, sharp nails over Ronan’s arm until the boy snatched it away with a scowl. The man smiled a yellow smile at Adam and Adam pushed Ronan into the house faster, dumping his funnel cake into a trash can as he went.

Sprawling beyond the front door was a moonlit living room with dusty chairs and carpets, antique fixings, and a dark fireplace. There were other rooms and hallways, but they weren’t visible. A second, but identical, butler corralled them up the winding set of stairs to their right and Adam heard Blue laugh at the absurd theatrics of it. He saw her reach out and trail her fingers over a painting, leaving a dustless track. The eyes of the painting followed her up the stairs.

They were halfway up the stairs when Gansey yelped and jumped back, almost crashing into Ronan who only barely caught him. Adam saw a dark flash scurry across the steps where Gansey’s feet had been.

“There was a rat!” Gansey said, pointing at a hole in the wall.

“Gross,” Ronan said, sounding uninterested as he pushed Gansey back upright.

They made it to the top of the stairs. There was a semicircle landing filled with doors and then the stairs went back down and took a harsh turn before the first floor. Gansey and Ronan shared a look and split up to try the doors. Between them all, they realized only one door was unlocked.

“Man, you said this was a haunted house, not a fucking escape room,” Ronan complained, leaning against his locked door.

“Come on, we don’t want to hold the next group up,” Noah said, and disappeared into the room. The rest of them followed.

It was a stark room. Adam almost brought his arm up to shield his eyes. Nothing like the rest of the house, it was a play on an operating room with one weird gurney bed in the middle of the room. They all hesitated and then took a cautious step forward. At once, raggedy nurses with entirely too large needles melted out of the walls and weaved in between all of them, pulling at their arms. Gansey grabbed Blue and tugged her to the other side of the room, the next door, and Noah had disappeared entirely, but Adam and Ronan weren’t so lucky. The nurses pulled them apart, pushed Adam towards the bed and wrapped some ugly looking gauze around Ronan’s eyes.

Adam realized his hands were being slipped in the straps on the bed and he felt his heart rate kick up, so he was surprised when his voice came out so even as he said, “Please don’t do that.” And maybe it was the direct eye or the fact that this was only the first room, but the girl holding his wrist, let go long enough that he could wrench his hand free and stumble over to the rest of the group.

Behind them, Ronan was cursing a storm, ripping the bandages off of his head and scowling at the actors around them as he finally pulled himself free and got across the room.

“Fuck you,” he snarled, pointing an accusatory finger at Gansey.

Gansey looked unkempt for the first time all night but still managed to say, “It was Noah’s idea.”

“Fuck you too!” Ronan said, finding Noah ahead of them.

With the door open, the sounds of the next room were bleeding in, squealing pigs and the heavy twack of cleavers.

“Cliche,” Blue complained and pressed closer into Gansey’s side.

“Do you think they even know they’re doing it?” Noah asked, at Adam’s side without seeming to have moved. Adam watched Gansey and Blue head into the room, then Ronan.

“Doing what?” he asked as he followed.

“Getting all up in each other’s space like that. Gansey’s not usually so forward, but he can be pretty oblivious.”

“A dangerous combination,” Adam said.

“Duck,” Noah said. And Adam did without thinking. A rubber cleaver swung over his head.

“How’d you know?” Adam asked.

“I’ve lived with Gansey for two years. I know a lot about him.”

“No, I meant… Never mind.”

Adam jogged a few steps to catch up to Ronan and then immediately ran into his back as everyone piled into each other while Gansey tried to backtrack away from some shouting butcher with a bloody pig face.

“That’s disgusting,” Adam said and Ronan snorted in front of him.

“Guess I know what my halloween costume is gonna be.”

“You could just go as yourself. It’s sharp enough.” Adam said and then shouted when something reached out and grabbed his waist. He couldn’t see what it was between all the chains and hooks hanging over the walls and he didn’t care. He shoved everyone forward, pushing past the pig butcher and a table that was squirting blood. Definitely not how table anatomy worked, last time he’d checked.

They flooded into a long hall and Adam’s hair stood on end. Not a second later, there was a zombie trailing after him, moaning and gurgling and getting closer the longer Gansey took to stare at the decorations. Adam pressed closer to Ronan and eventually pressed his face between his shoulder blades when the zombie was finally on top of him. A childish response. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

A few seconds later, Adam realized he was being moved. Ronan was pulling Adam in front of him and telling the zombie to fuck off. Adam thought he heard the zombie laugh. Probably because the next room was a graveyard and hands started popping out of the ground and reaching for their ankles. Then, the door didn’t open.

“Gansey!” Ronan shouted, shaking his foot at a mottled grey hand.

“It’s not open!” Gansey shouted back.

Blue shrieked as a whole entire person came out of a mound of dirt.

“Try it again,” Noah said, somewhere behind him. He pressed himself around Ronan and Adam and then hid his face against Blue’s shoulder when the zombie next to her turned a snarling face towards him. Blue laughed, horror and entertainment plain in it.

Gansey finally got the door open and then him and Blue both shouted as two more zombies spilled through. They all had to walk between the zombies to get into the next room so between the shouting and laughing, Adam hadn’t realized the music had changed. He really didn’t notice until Ronan was suddenly yelping and clinging onto Adam like he forgot it wasn’t Gansey in front of him.

Adam jumped as the first bloody faced clown tottered in front of him, cutting him and Ronan off from the rest of the group.

“Clowns, really?” he asked dubiously to the face hidden against his shoulder, a mirror of Noah earlier.

“Get fucked, they’re fucked up,” Ronan answered and didn’t lift his head.

Adam reached for his shirt, trying to keep him close as he maneuvered through jack-in-the-box jump scares that had him yelping and fun house mirrors that clowns were definitely walking through behind them. He came to a halt when a clown popped up right before the next door, cackling loudly and waving a comic-esque bat around. If Adam just pushed by him, it’d leave Ronan right against the clown. So he had to turn a little, face the clown directly, and side step through the door.

He didn’t even like Ronan.

Once they were through, he pushed Ronan back in front of him. He’d been brave long enough. They went through a room with a bunch of howling and shredded decor with a werewolf at the end who broke off its chain and lunged, snarling and mouth bloody, at them, which caused Ronan to jump back into Adam and almost knock him over. They went down a slanted hallway with more fun house mirrors and faces that shouldn’t be there, chaotic screaming echoing disjointed in the air. For a second, down a too narrow tunnel of hot air and rough wall, Adam thought he saw the rest of their group, Gansey giving Noah a piggyback and Blue holding onto Noah’s sweater, but then they weren’t in the next room.

Adam walked directly into Ronan’s back, smashing his face against a shoulder blade and cursing as he stepped around and rubbed his nose. The room was quiet and clean, mercifully. In the middle of the room, a man laid face down, blood pooled around his head. Adam glanced around, looking for trap doors and jump scares.

“Come on, we’ve got to be getting close to the end,” he said. Most of the hallways had been steps or slants, back down to the ground floor. He reached for Ronan’s wrist and tried to pull him through the room, but Ronan wouldn’t move. Adam looked back in frustration. “Dude, let’s go,” he snapped. “Don’t give them more time to scare us.”

The longer they stood there, the more Adam’s heart calmed down. He hadn’t even realized it’d really been racing. His head was ringing from the onslaught of noise to his deaf ear and he just wanted to get out. And Ronan wasn’t budging.

“Ronan,” he said again and yanked on Ronan’s arm until he stumbled a few steps.

“I can’t,” Ronan said smally.

“Can’t what? Let’s go.”

“I can’t...I can’t…” And then Ronan broke down, bringing his hands up to his face. Of course the actor took that moment to stand up and stumble towards them. For the second time that night, Adam’s plea to them worked. He waved his hand off at the man and stepped up towards Ronan.

“What’s going on? We can’t just stay here,” he said. “We’ve got to finish the house.”

“I can’t… I can’t look at it. I can’t do it again,” Ronan whimpered. Adam was at a loss, which didn’t happen very often.

“Alright. Then we won’t look. Just like with the clowns, right? I’ll just help you out.” He wrapped an arm around Ronan’s waist and started to walk across the room. He could feel how shaky Ronan’s legs were and he barely got to the next hallway before Ronan was collapsing against the wall.

“Ronan!” someone shouted and Adam sagged back too when Gansey was there to take Ronan’s side and stand him up and apologize. Blue looked at Adam but Adam didn’t have anything to offer but a confused shrug.

Noah walked on Ronan’s other side as they finished the last maze of the house with movie characters popping out of the walls and around corners, always drawing a shout from someone. Freddy Kruger got Blue by drawing his knife fingers against her short hair and Jason freaked out Noah and the chainsaw massacre guy even got Ronan’s legs working on their own again as he ducked away and shouted curses.

Adam had never been so happy to step out into cool night air in his life. Noah laid down on the ground, starfished out as his chest rose and fell rapidly with shaky breaths. “That was awesome!” he said.

Ronan sat down next to him heavily, arms coming up to rest on his bent knees. “And you think you could haunt Monmouth,” he said derisively.

“I can be plenty spooky,” Noah said, grinning at Ronan. Again, for a second, Adam thought his face was bashed in, but it must’ve been left over images in his mind from the room that freaked Ronan out.

Gansey kept a steady eye on Ronan for a while, but decided all must be fine when Ronan threw mud on Noah. “We were going to go eat, if you want to come with us,” he offered, barely remembering to look at Adam with an eager grin as well as Blue.

Blue glanced up at Adam and then towards the rest of the fair. “I think that’d be fine. Adam, you’re down, right?”

Adam looked over at Ronan and then quickly looked away when he realized Ronan was already looking at him. “Sure. I could eat. I should go with you anyway. Maura left me in charge, remember?”

Blue rolled her eyes and shoved Adam’s shoulder. “You’re an asshole. Maybe you should’ve applied to Aglionby instead of Whatever-Crest.”

“Oh, you don’t go to Mountain View with Blue?” Gansey asked. Adam looked dubiously at Blue: Y _ou’ve already told him about school?_ But then shook his head. “No, I go to a private school in Maryland. I got a scholarship. Academic,” he clarified quickly, even if it was equally as need based.

“Aglionby has scholarships. And a great transfer program. Most of our students are transfers. I think Ronan and his brothers are some of the only originals left.” He looked over at Ronan again and found him coloring comically large drops of blood on Noah’s arm with a pen he clearly lifted from Gansey. All was still well. “I’ll give you our academic advisor’s number. I’m sure you want to stick closer to home.

 _Not really_ , Adam thought, but didn’t say it out loud. It would be a lot easier for the psychics if he’d just stick around. And Whatever-Crest really wasn’t the kind of place he actually wanted to be. And it _would_ be good for his magic, based on his hypothesis about all of it.

“Thanks,” he said, and didn’t know what else to say.

“Can we go?” Noah asked, sitting up and shaking dirt and leaves from his blond hair.

“I’m fucking starving,” Ronan added. Adam thought he saw a bit of a facade in his eyes.

Gansey sighed and gestured for everyone to follow him. Adam watched them walk for a few steps, waiting to see if anyone would turn around. Blue did, of course, but then so did Ronan, then Gansey and Noah.

“Let’s go, magic boy,” Ronan said, waving his arm. “I owe you at least fries for that clown room.”

Adam felt his heart rate kick up and this time no monsters had anything to do with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Will I continue this? Who knows. All my other halloween fics aren't going anywhere so it depends how spooky I continue to feel
> 
> Find me [here on tumblr](https://abarbaricyalp.tumblr.com/)


End file.
